Staff report
SALISBURY — If you’re just now starting to look at college softball and baseball rosters, Abbey Nixon is on the Catawba College softball team.
Nixon has spent the last two years playing for one of Catawba’s biggest rivals — Lenoir-Rhyne.
Nixon was one of those players who came along during a rough time for the world and had her high school career at Carson drastically affected by COVID. Nixon only got to play six games as a sophomore. As a junior, she got to play a 15-game season and was sensational enough that she was Co-Player of the Year in Rowan County. She batted a county-leading .528 and scored 22 runs as a center fielder/shortstop.
The sports seasons were jumbled in the 2020-21 school year, with delayed seasons and short seasons. After her softball season was finished, Nixon was helping out the Carson track and field team when she tore an ACL.
She made it back from knee surgery and played her senior year of softball in 2022. She finally got to play a full season and while she couldn’t have been at 100 percent yet, she raced around the bases for an inside-the-park homer. She batted .351 with 29 RBIs and came through with a ton of two-out hits for the Cougars.
In 2023, Nixon played in only a handful of games and redshirted at Lenoir-Rhyne.
In 2024 and 2025, she played often in the outfield for really stout Bear teams — 52-18 and 38-19 — that won SAC Tournaments and NCAA playoff games. Nixon is really solid in the outfield, but she got labeled as a defensive specialist somewhere along the way, so she was usually the FLEX for the Bears, the defense-only player for whom the DP bats.
Nixon didn’t get many chances to swing the last two seasons and never got into any kind of groove in the batter’s box. She was 6-for-34 with a homer and a triple in 2024 and 5-for-41 in 2025. Even her FLEX playing time was diminishing late last season, which helps explain why she’s wearing a Catawba uniform now.
Catawba was one of the schools that recruited Nixon when she was in high school.
It’s a fresh start for Nixon back home with Catawba and coach Allie Lyerly, and it’s reasonable to believe she’ll hit well if she gets consistent at-bats. There was a time, when she was wearing the blue and orange of Carson, that her offense was considered the equal of her defense.
Because of the redshirt year, Nixon still has two years of eligibility and could make an impact with the Indians, who were 23-23 overall and 12-12 in the SAC in 2025.
Catawba’s 2026 season starts at home on Saturday at 1 p.m. with Augusta at Whitley Field for a doubleheader.
